


House of Smoke and Mirrors

by ladysisyphus



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-25
Updated: 2010-07-25
Packaged: 2017-12-11 14:47:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/799916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladysisyphus/pseuds/ladysisyphus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One of his greatest virtues was that he didn't ask questions; thus, when their Architect, a fussy little woman with wild green eyes, had described to him the contours of the half-hearted equivalent of French palace gardens to him, he had nodded at the appropriate points and committed the layout to memory, and never once voiced an inquiry as to why that might be the best place to unearth the secrets of a Somali weapons dealer. That decision had been Cobb's to make, and that meant all Arthur had to do was internalize the twists and turns made by the various horticultural obstiacles until he could quite literally walk them in his sleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	House of Smoke and Mirrors

One of his greatest virtues was that he didn't ask questions; thus, when their Architect, a fussy little woman with wild green eyes, had described to him the contours of the half-hearted equivalent of French palace gardens to him, he had nodded at the appropriate points and committed the layout to memory, and never once voiced an inquiry as to why that might be the best place to unearth the secrets of a Somali weapons dealer. That decision had been Cobb's to make, and that meant all Arthur had to do was internalize the twists and turns made by the various horticultural obstiacles until he could quite literally walk them in his sleep.

He'd entered in alone this time, ever the consummate perfectionist, doing his final pre-flight check to make sure that he'd been a good enough student. The edges of perception were looser when he was alone, and he sat in the middle of a pavilion on a stone bench, closing his eyes; he sat that way for the length of nine breaths, watching the light dim behind his eyelids, and when he looked up again, the sun had set just behind the far horizon, leaving the sky a pale pink and dispelling the previous sharp mid-day shadows. The final shared dream would take place in a daylight setting, but he had always preferred the stillness of the earlly evening, even if it meant taking him that many steps closer darkness. He wasn't afraid of the dark any longer.

Without the aid of crisp light, he walked the garden paths, keeping his head down, watching nothing more than his feet for cues to his location. Tall hedges and well-groomed topiaries passed by the periphery of his vision, but he let them go unnoticed. When he saw the toes of his cream-tipped shoes approach a junction, he made the decision based on the map in his head, following the path to its logical conclusion.

Thus, he supposed he should hardly have been surprised to find when his shoes came upon a set of three white marble steps leading to a side door of the gardens' palace; he had, after all, been following the path to the end, and in a maze, the end was customarily the same as the exit. But he'd been so concerned with the gardens that he'd somehow managed to forget the whole structure next to them, as neatly as if he'd been seated in front of a magic show, eyes fixed on only what the magician had wanted him to see, the perfect victim of misdirection. The Architect hadn't mentioned anything's being inside the building, but she likewise hadn't mentioned anything's _not_ being inside, and thus he weighted the conditions and deemed entry permissible. It was, after all, his own dream, and he should not allow himself to remain ignorant of anything that might later become a liability.

Pushing his boater hat back slightly on his head, Arthur reached for the handle and was somewhat surprised to find it turn easily in his grip. The pale grey fabric of his seersucker suit jacket held the last rays of light from the sky and reflected them back, luminous against the pitch darkness behind the door.

He jerked his head over his shoulder, feeling a chill crawl up the back of his neck as though someone might be standing behind him -- though when he turned, the garden was empty, which in and of itself gave him pause. He was not the most sociable of people even on his best days, a condition reflected in how his own subconscious tended to be sparsely populated, but even so, he could almost always count on a few stray pedestrians, the anthropomorphic bits of his subconscious turned tourists. Emptiness was unsettling enough on its own merits; the fact that abandonment had been a popular theme in his early night terrors did nothing to quell his unease.

Still, he was a man now, not the boy clutching a tattered corner of blanket as the doctors strapped an adult-sized interface to his six-year-old wrist, and he was not -- _not_ \-- afraid of the dark. There could, after all, be nothing in there more terrifying than what was in his own mind, and _he_ was in control of his own mind. For a moment, he shut his eyes, and when he opened them again, they had adjusted enough to be able to see the rough contours of objects inside. Comforted sufficiently that there _was_ something inside, Arthur stepped inside and let the door swing shut behind him.

What he saw as the light rose from some unknown source nearly made him bolt for the door again, and only years of deep and conscious practice kept him rooted in place. Before him stretched a corridor, reaching off to some far unseen destination, lined with mirrors on either side that stared back into each other. Arthur extended a hand before him, and a chorus line of Arthurs made the same move on either side of him; he took a step forward, and they followed his lead. "Well, that's eerie," he said to no one in particular, and though his reflections jawed along with him, they were silent.

There seemed little to keep him going, but likewise there seemed little to stop him, and so Arthur decided, at least for a little while, to follow the path of least resistance, which seemed to lead him forward. It wasn't until he was several steps in that he noticed his left-hand reflection seemed to lag behind him, just a hair. He watched it from the corner of his eye, testing it by doing little things like lifting his hand to straighten his bow tie and frowning as it seemed the slightest bit slow. Once, he stopped suddenly, but the change of his own momentum jostled him so much that he couldn't tell for certain whether or not the movements had been synchronized. He started again, and the reflection seemed to come with him, stopping and starting appropriately three more times as he staggered down the hallway, aware that every step took him farther from the door but unable to stop himself so long as the solution to this mystery felt as though it lay well within his grasp.

Finally, subject to a fit of inspiration, Arthur stopped and removed his hat. He held it out in front of him, seeing the reflected ensemble do the same, then tossed the hat gently forward, putting a spin on it at just the last moment. An infinite number of real and mirrored hats took the same trajectory, spinning forward a foot before flipping over and landing brim-up -- all, that was, except for one, which had been flung with slightly too much force, and which sailed on a few feet past its counterparts. "Got you!" Arthur exclaimed, spinning and pointing a finger at his left-hand reflection.

The reflection actually had the good grace to look startled by having its deception uncovered, then let the corner of its mouth gather up into a wicked smile Arthur was fairly certain he'd never had occasion to produce on his own. "I suppose you do," said the reflection. "But the next question is, what'll you do with me?"

It was a fair line of inquiry, and as Arthur calculated he had at least another few minutes left on the real-world timer, he found himself in the position of actually having to formulate an answer. "...What's going on?"

"I'm you. Isn't it obvious enough?" The reflection strode forward a few feet, just enough to retrieve his hat, and instead of putting it back on, held it at eye level, examining the crimson ribbon that ran around the band. The motions may have been independent, but the resemblance was uncanny.

"You're not me," said Arthur, feeling fairly certain despite similarities that this was a correct statement. He retreated from the false reflection until his back was against the far mirror, finding to his great dismay that as he'd been paying attention to the wall on his left, the one on his right had grown oppressively close -- misdirection, again, his mind ever the clever magician.

The reflection appeared to consider this for a moment. "Mm. All right. Perhaps I'm not. Maybe I'm an evil twin. You know, separated at birth, strangled in the womb, come back to haunt you down through some biological memory of your cold-blooded pre-natal murder? Torment you with guilt?"

Arthur frowned, feeling the cold of the glass press against the back of his head. "The Architect wouldn't have put you in here; you've got to be some manifestation of my subconscious." He raised an eyebrow, weighing what few possibilities came to mind; few seemed possible at all, much less plausible, and Arthur found himself at something of a loss. He'd never met himself in any of his dreams before, not even the worst terrors that trapped him screaming and wouldn't let him go, and he wasn't entirely sure what to make of the encounter.

"All inside your mind, yes? Then come on, why not have a little fun with it?" The glass between them shimmered, and suddenly Arthur found himself face-to-face with the reflection in real space, looking every bit as polished as Arthur usually kept himself, but with an unfamiliar edge to his expressions. "Come on. Haven't you ever wondered some things about yourself? Like how you look from outside your own skin? How you sound?" The reflection grasped the tail end of Arthur's bow tie, and unfurled it with a single tug. "...How you _taste_?"

Arthur batted his dopplegänger's hand away, but left the fabric hanging around his neck. Something about this felt familiar, and he'd almost been fooled by the disconcerting event of staring down his own face, but now his brain began to make connections even beyond what he knew from the other side of the bathroom mirror. "...What's my mother's maiden name?"

"Harris," answered the reflection; he pressed his hand flat against the glass and leaned closer, well up into Arthur's personal space, and Arthur could smell a hint of his own aftershave coming from the double's throat. "Ask me a difficult one."

"My best friend growing up." Arthur swallowed, feeling the lump in his throat rock as he swallowed like a ship on rough seas. He'd spent so long learning to let dream-logic take its own path, letting it flow around him as harmlessly as a currented stream flowed around the legs of a wader, that sometimes it was hard to kick against even the obvious discrepancies.

The reflection laughed. "Not fair; you'd have to have had one. Next." His fingers undid the button of Arthur's jacket and swept one side back, bringing his fingers to rest on Arthur's hip, just above his belt.

Arthur wanted to pull away, but his feet felt leaden, and the reflection already had knees pressed to the very outside of Arthur's legs, making mobility difficult in its own right. It seemed the height of vanity, to be so flustered by this arrangement, but he found his mouth dry and his heart pounding, and he could hardly draw together the wherewithal to bring up a question less easily researched: "...Why do I work with Cobb?"

"Because," said the double, and from the first vowel, Arthur could hear a now-familiar British accent replace his own, "the I-Have-A-Giant-Stick-Up-My-Arse Sporting Club only meets once a week, and you don't have anything else to fill your lonely little dance card."

It was lucky for all concerned parties that the alarm on the machine went off before Arthur could manage to maneuver his hand into position enough to punch himself in the nose; self-injury was never good for the psyche, no matter how externalized the self might be.

 

~*~

 

There was a crash and a shout, and the door to the office flew open as Arthur stomped out, practically sporting an honest-to-God stormcloud above his head as he made a fierce beeline straight for the side door. Cobb looked up from his drafting table, considering the last person he'd seen entering the office and putting two and two together. "So, how are you and our Forger getting along?"

Arthur treated Cobb to a clear view of his upraised middle finger before storming out.


End file.
